This movie and more importantly kamal disappoints. My own ramblings are here
http://senthlpk.blogspot.com/2008/06/da ... oints.htmlQuote:
Dasavatharam - Kamal disappoints
Let’s get this straight – Kamal Hassan is a national treasure and KS Ravikumar is a very bad director.
Indian movies for most parts merely serve as a vehicles for hero worship – from the days of Bhagavathar to “Dr Illyathalapathiâ€. every decade has its favorite “hero-pair†be it MGR/Sivaji, Rajini/Kamal, Ajit/Vijay and so on. Our directors (with a few exceptions) are either slaves to these heros or mere puppet in their hands.
Kamal is a rarity – he is both an actor (national award winning I might add) and a director (some obscure Korean award for virumandi?). Anyone even remotely doubting his penchant for making movies has probably been sleeping under a rock for the last forty year – simply put he is a living legend who makes mistakes. What is additionally interesting with kamal is that he is a “known†rationalist and spiritually inquisitive – look no further than Anbe sivam for what I mean. This particular aspect is what draws this writer to “kamal films†– Nayagan, Thevar Magan, Guna, Pushpak, Anbe Sivam all stand tall in repertoire.
Kamal , post Indian has developed a fixation with makeups – probably from his drama routes. This fixation has only helped soar his reputation as a great actor – be it the atrociously simple Indian or the sweet Avvai Shanmugi (my favorite ). Alas “this†kamal seems to have gone overboard with his fascination resulting in disastrous consequence – namely his over hyped magnum opus “Dasavatharamâ€.
Now to the movie – with all the hype surrounding the film, the initial scenes captivate and glue you to your seats. It moves you deeply, leaves you with Goosebumps and makes you impatient while asking for more. Alas for most viewers the movie will start and end here, what follows after is probably the most contrived storyline one would have ever hatched together.
Kamal’s canvas is simply too large and too thin to paint and whatever happen on it leaves nothing but a-mess-of-a-film that’s scarred beyond recognition by its own auteur. Perhaps the giant who calls himself kamal has either taken up a task too big for him or was reined in by the more earthly commercial gimmicks – romance, comedy, fight, drama and yeah 10 different makeups !
The story is “simple†– its fate trying to connect the dots between people. Every action is inter connected and has a consequences. More importantly these actions have a meaning that’s all carefully put together by the master himself a.k.a the almighty. The people, as you would guess is kamal in 10 different roles criss-crossing each other in the most cinematic fashion. If “this†is how god planed, then he surely must suck at it!
The details – a biological weapon is out of the super secret labs in the US and reaches shores of India, following the “viral-bomb†is kamal the scientist, his boss sends out “terminator†kamal to wipe him out and retrieve the box. Kamal is stopped by naidu (his best role following the priest). The box is addressed to patti kamal, so our hero reaches Chithambaram to retrieve blah blah blah……, yawn… yawn – you get it right ?
Now that the stupid story is out of the way – let’s look at why one should hate this movie
- Plot holes – there are so many that this exercises is best left as an exercise for kindergarten kids.
- Inconsistent script, screenplay and not to mention the piss-poor dialogs, what could have been powerfully moving, rib-tickingly funny, bitingly sarcastic only ends being irritatingly repetitive and idiotically unfunny except of course our naidu who along with the priest stand tall among all other insignificant characters.
- Hollywood influence – being clearly inspired by the “terminator†assassin, the butterfly effect, the crash/babel style screen play and day after tomorrow type tsunami only proves that the director has either seen these movie or own these dvds (thank god for these wonderful little invention!) . I still don’t understand how this tsunami special-effect was accepted – we simply don’t know how to create special effects , by even somalian standard it looks very amateurish.
- Makeup – as numerous others have complained online and elsewhere, we come to see kamal movies for his acting skills, the way he would flex his facial muscle to show off character nuances, not hide behind some ramsay brother horror show makeup. As they used to say “the make-up fails once the character vanishes and the actor emergesâ€. Alas the film’s greatest gimmick is also its failure !
- Overly symbolic - With characters named as Govind Ramaswamy, Andal, Chritian Fletcher etc. there were opportunities galore to leverage them but nothing happened along these lines – Andaal was good at being more stupid than taking care of lord, and our “periyar†was more confused than a dog on a highway.
- Tsunami – In an effort to showcase a point-of-view, the creators of this magum opus have leveraged tsunami to explain “intelligent designâ€. In order to save millions of victims a few 100 thousand need to be destroyed !!!! This accordingly to this reviewer is the single most obscene cinematic act that Indian cinema has ever experienced. No one and I repeat no one can justify what happened when nature unleashed her fury on unsuspecting, innocent people. Its heart breaking to notes these people were also socially and economically weak. Tsunami is the absolute truth – one cannot justify why it happened, trying to do that would only result in rubbing salt in “real†wound of victims. Along with india how does one explain over 100K death in Indonesia, 30K death is srilanka and over 200K missing in total !
Of course kamal does question the act but leaves it at that and starts romancing the very next minute while the backdrop is filled with people either dead or dying or crying for their dead. This cinematic time-splice experiment is so disgusting and so forced this viewer felt like throwing his slipper at the screen.
Fate, chance, religion, actions, consequences are too big of a topic to wrestle with – it’s best left with people who can handle it. As much as I complain about running-around-trees-signing-songs-type-films, I would prefer that over this half-baked insulting piece of trash cinema.
So let me repeat Kamal is a national treasure – his movies are looked up on as quintessential good Indian movies, but his latest outing is a travesty is film making. In an effort to create a record of some sorts kamal et. al. merely resemble the fellow who stopped cutting his finger nails to enter the Guinness book – yes it’s a world record but pretty disgusting to look at!
Kamal fans (unlike others) are of two types – one who like him as a brilliant actor and the other who worship him for his persona. I am the former, for me Kamal is our Robert De Niro – numerous times have I seen his films and enjoyed them but alas in Dasvatharam Kamal the persona takes over and when all chaos ends only his mountain size ego remains.
The only Tamil movie i enjoyed this year is Anjathey - that one inspite of its faults is a gem, this one is a colossal failure imo.
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from where MF was com,ing from and did enjoy both MEENAXI and GAJA GAMINI as ART put on celulide with different MF HUSSAIN's perspective 
